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Microsoft Has Broken Millions Of Webcams With Windows 10 Anniversary Update (thurrott.com)
The Anniversary Update which Microsoft rolled out to Windows 10 users earlier this month has broken millions of webcams, the company said on Friday. The problem is that after installing the update, the company added, Windows no longer allows USB webcams to use MJPEG or H264 encoding processes, and only supports YUY2 encoding. Microsoft says it introduced the changes to prevent an issue that was resulting in duplication of encoding the stream (poor performance). If you're facing the issue, there's a workaround (via Thurrott.com): Rafael has figured out a workaround that should hopefully stop the freezing issue; if you are comfortable tweaking the registry, make this change. HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\Platform, add DWORD "EnableFrameServerMode" and set to 0
Headaches.
Thursday I did an emergency install of Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS on an old DELL laptop because Windows 10 suddenly couldn't manage to light up the built-in screen anymore.
"Microsoft Has Broken Millions of Computers With Windows 10 Anniversary Update"...
H.264? There are evil patents associated with that right?
This just sounds like Microsoft is trying to act like a positive in the freedom dimension Linux distro by refusing to support that evil patenty thing and by refusing to support webcams, which we all know could be used as NSA backdoors and are therefore evil.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I mean, I get it. I get that you don't want to support more than one platform or configuration at any given moment in time. It's not fun having to regression test against a billion third-party devices, and it's not cool to QA things that work fine on your machine - and in a DevOps world, you don't have to - but please, find someone in your office with a little grey in his beard, and ask them, just once, about writing software with the user's needs in mind, not just your manager's desire to cut support costs.
It wasn't that long ago that software that worked, continued to work until the end user broke it by changing something. Now the users aren't breaking things -- but you are. Why?
Would it seriously be too much to ask if, in exchange for no longer being able to receive technical support (because technically, a working configuration that isn't "the newest version" is unsupported in this brave new world Nadella's created for us), users be permitted to not change already-working configurations?
First post! And regarding webcams...good riddance. To me, this is a feature, not a bug.
I see. Because squirting 720p or 1080p video as uncompressed YUYV over a USB2 link never results in performance problems...
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This is a security update to prevent government spying on citizens.
Memo to the NSA: You will have to try harder to spy on people through their webcams.
Fun for everyone!!! Well, except you.
As opposed to, say, Elon Musk? He had a virtual monopoly on stories here just a couple months ago
So I had plenty of issues after Anniversary edition update. Sound issues, choppy scrolling again in Chrome. Finicky touchpad with jitter and freeze. I finally decided it was time to try a Linux distro. Yes, I have had plenty of issues with Linux distro's in the past. But this time not a one, and besides that my scanner that didn't work in Windows 10 now works in Ubuntu. Sorry but I think having to endure more problems every six months or so on yet another Windows 10 roll out is just too much.
The real reason, it was interfering with the NSA backdoor that watches you sleep.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
It's called "driver hell". Windows... No drivers found for this device, see manufacturer. Manufacturer... No drivers for this version of Windows. Fix... Install Linux, no drivers needed to be installed.
Emergency BIOS patches from Dell! What fun!
They know what's best for us. The more we struggle, the less we'll be happy. Besides, who needs a webcam when I can Snapchat my breakfast from my smartphone?
-Sent from my Bing-enabled Edge browser that pays me money each time I look at kittens /sarcasm
Anyone remember that legendary video called "Every OS Sucks" by "Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie?" Yeah, it's never been truer.
How about Microsoft be held accountable for recklessly and possibly unlawfully disabling functionality in personal computers that people paid for and have a right to use?
When are these criminal enterprises EVER going to be held accountable for their crimes?
This was a compatibility update that makes it easier for the NSA to spy through people's webcams.
And then he got sued by Parker Brothers.
"That's a strange registry error you have there, let me fix it for you... and prevent it from working ever again" -a future KB update.
I rolled it back for multiple reasons. The webcam was completely unrelated. NordVPN client wouldn't connect, and HFS partition disappeared. I liked half of the new features, but the other half were broken things. I can't work with an update like that when I'm not at home for half a year. Luckily it rolled back easily.
What would be a suitable anniversary gift from Microsoft than breaking your system.
There was no performance issue - the problem was that multiple applications could not access the camera at once, and it was important to fix this.
Quoting:
" It was important for us to enable concurrent camera access, so Windows Hello, Microsoft Hololens and other products and features could reliably assume that the camera would be available at any given time, regardless of what other applications may be accessing it. "
https://social.msdn.microsoft....
Which is of great comfort to the owners of medical imagers that are now junk unless someone catches and rolls back the anniversary edition. There is claimed to be a fix in the pipe.
What is that you have there? ... yes.
It's my computer with windows 10 installed.
So a expensive space heater?
Windows 10 headaches?
Solution (permanent): one Linux ISO, one install process. Done.
At least Windows 10 doesn't have systemd yet.
(It's probably coming).
So now you are saying that Windows as well as Linux don't support my 1990s-2000s era webcam?
Nice to see Windows 10 finally catching up to the Linux desktop in hardware support.
Because software QA and validation is for chumps!
This is exactly why, when setting up a new computer for my grandma, I shelled out for a Windows 10 Enterprise with CBB servicing (Current Branch for Business). Sure, I've had to eat Ramen for the last month, but it's been totally worth it because my grandma's webcam is still working fine.
Be right back, she can't get Pogo games working again.
Only a DWORD would say "Microsoft has broken a million..." Really!? Did Apple break a million headphones last month? Fanboism
Another reason why Windows is not ready for the desktop.
Grandma runs desktop Linux just fine.
Some USB television tuners seems to works just fine, spurting h264 signals directly to the hard drives..
You can count on this happening all the time now. Microsoft removing stuff that makes your hardware work or changing something so that you require a new driver, but the manufacturer will never produce a driver because your product is already more than two months old.
Windows 10 is a train-wreck in slow motion. When will it end?
I thought I noticed fewer people on chaturbate.com than usual...
...to prevent the NSA from spying on people.
...so this is now how the individual Windows updates come out now? Public bulletins with users mentioning fast fixes... hmm.. there's another OS that did that in the past and MS said that it was a horrid OS with no concern for security or usability... Lin... Line.... L-something.
Psh.
Older versions of Windows have a "Favorites" sub-menu on the left side of File Explorer. When I had to convert to Windows 10 at work, the "Favorites" links were automatically migrated into something called the "Quick Access" (QA) menu. So far so good: it converted old stuff into its new convention.
However, "Favorites" used alias names, similar to naming a Windows Shortcut. But QA doesn't (at least not by default). Instead, QA uses the last actual folder name in the path as the displayed title.
I thought QA simply rudely renamed my Favorites titles, so I right-clicked on them to "fix" the titles. Turns out I wasn't looking at an alias, but the live folder name.
The result is I inadvertently renamed network folders used by hundreds of employees! Of course trouble-tickets started popping up like pop-corn. I put two and two together, and quickly renamed them back, and then went for a walk to dry off the sweat.
Table-ized A.I.
Hacker pervs and NSA hardest hit!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lets face facts Windows 10 just Sux for everyone, but for IT it is making us nutz when clueless managers insist we upgrade to it. Like walking a mine field blindfolded in 10'x10' cement shoes.
to pre-recorded porn how am i going to rub one out now.
The basic problem was that the developers at Microsoft don't understand who uses their OS and why. They had 5 use cases when they were developing their new feature, but forgot about the 50,000 use cases that already exist, unknown to the development staff.
"We changed an API's behavior because of this new feature that nobody cares about, which broke almost every imaging device attached to the OS" reeks of poor engineering management.
Recently or since they were founded. Consistency is key ðY
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"...
We apologise for the fault in this comment. Those responsible have been sacked.
Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretti nasti...
We apologise again for the fault in this comment. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Sounds like all those girls doing webcam shows at home will have to find some legitimate employment.
If they don't make money from you, who are they really supporting?
Microsoft is getting like Gentoo
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's like a race between who can update themselves out of business first, MS or Apple. Who wins? Linux!
YUY2
allows for government spying through a backdoor
and was paid for handsomely by Homeland
This new CEO of Microsoft better wise up pretty quick about how to run that company, because they way they have been handling their OS as of late is like begging people to sue them.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Your comment made me laugh at first, then I read someone else further down https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9547305&cid=52735271
the problem was that multiple applications could not access the camera at once, and it was important to fix this.
but you're right, NSA couldn't spy on you if your camera was previously in use.
And this is why cumulative, mandatory, updates are a BAD THING.
It's like they're not even trying now to hide it anymore. They have pretty much openly declared themselves to be hostile to users with a lot of forced updates that benefit not the user but themselves. But MS fanboys will still lap it up and somehow say it's a good thing.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Microsoft, or going from enabling the masses to do things with their pc's to dissabling them all as much as possible. Real progress toward the stone age again.
Think of all the people they're protecting from unauthorised web cam snooping!
Due to technical difficulties, your webcam will not be available going forward.
As a consolation, please enjoy all the free ads we have chosen just for you (as per Cortana of course)
Microsoft knows exactly what it is doing, and it knows what it wants you to do: it wants you to buy a new webcam.
I think it’s refreshing that MS is so open about the contempt in which they hold their customers. So many big corporations try to pretend they care.
MS is being honest with their customers – you are their cow and they will milk you whenever the fuck they want to.
You'd think that Microsoft would be able to query it's installed base via whatever Win10 was collecting and figure out how people were using a feature. Either they can't, or nobody thought of it.
The ads will still work.